


Hermione Granger and the Alternate Timeline

by pendrecarc



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Gen, Missing Scenes, Pre-Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, References to Canonical Character Death, Second Wizarding War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: Three years after losing the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione is working with the remnants of the Order of the Phoenix in an increasingly desperate attempt to fight Voldemort's reign. When she survives an attack on the Order's safehouse despite being left bleeding, wandless, and alone, she begins to harbor the wild suspicion that she has an ally in Voldemort's inner circle. But she's going to need proof.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger & Severus Snape
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	Hermione Granger and the Alternate Timeline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/gifts).



Her wand was gone.

That was the first thing that came to Hermione, before she noticed the shooting pain in her leg or the smell of burning wood or even the fact that she was hanging almost upside-down. That was the most important lesson of the last several years: above all else, secure your wand. And hers wasn’t in her hand.

She opened her eyes to a mottled screen of smoke over what had been the kitchen at Harrow House. A cough seized her, and she doubled up, gasping, which wrenched her leg even harder. It was caught somewhere above her. She had been in the room just above the kitchen, she remembered; now she was hanging through the remnants of the kitchen ceiling. She couldn’t see or hear anyone, whether from the Order or the Death Eaters. An ongoing fight would have made some noise. All dead, then, or Apparated away? The last thing she remembered was giving the order to evacuate, just as the wards began to fall.

Her leg was white agony, and there were a number of lesser pains clamoring to make themselves known, but she wiped her streaming eyes and peered through the smoke, struggling for a glimpse of her wand. “ _Virgulam accio_ ,” she whispered, without much hope. Nothing. She understood wandless magic in theory, but she’d never managed to put it into practice.

All right; she’d have to do this the old-fashioned way. Hermione swallowed down her panic and bent at the waist, reaching up as far as her arm could go. Her robes were caught on a bit of the floorboards. She scrabbled at them until they began to tear. Then she slid, and fell, and landed on her side on the tall kitchen counter, which drove all the air from her lungs in a strangled scream.

“Keep moving, Granger,” she gasped through gritted teeth, then got herself upright, or nearly. Another piece of the ceiling fell away. The fire seemed to be confined to the upper floor, which was the smallest of small mercies, but she had to move before it spread or the Death Eaters decided to have another try. She braced her hands on the counter, swung her legs over the edge, and collapsed the moment her weight landed.

Her vision went grey with pain. When it cleared, the first thing she saw was the door swinging open to reveal a pair of boots across the rubble-strewn floor. She turned her head with a monumental effort, her cheek sliding on gritty tile, and stared straight up into the face of—

“Professor Snape?” She could have cursed herself for saying it. He didn’t deserve the title. But far better if she could curse _him_. She shot a hand out, scrabbling through the splinters of wood covering the floor. If her wand had fallen with her—

Long fingers closed over her wrist. Snape was crouching over her, his own wand out, and with nothing left to lose she twisted and bit down hard on his hand. He snarled, “ _Stupid_ girl,” and shook her off with contemptuous ease.

Her eyes clouded over again. Her strength was fading fast, and with it went her resolve. In the best case scenario, she was about to die helplessly at the feet of one of the people she despised most in the world. In the worst, she was about to be tortured, and likely forced to give up the people she loved most. She had just enough time to be filled with impotent fury before Snape jerked his head in the direction of the door, said, “Damn you, Granger,” and whispered something under his breath.

Her vision went a darker grey that swallowed the kitchen at Harrow House entirely. Her ears filled with a roaring wind, and the pressure at her wrist turned vice-like, but that was nothing to the pounding in her head and the stabbing of her leg. Losing consciousness came as a relief.

***

“Is that Hermione?”

That was Ginny Weasley’s voice. Ginny had been at Harrow House, helping to hold the wards. Ginny wasn’t dead.

Neither, apparently, was Hermione. She was lying on her face on cold grass, which got into her mouth when she opened it. She spat out the earthy taste and rolled onto her side, noting as she did so that the pain in her leg had receded to a dull pulse.

“Don’t let your guard down!” And that was Kingsley Shackleboat, sharp and commanding.

“I know.” Ginny was beside her now, kneeling with a grim look on her face and her wand leveled at Hermione’s head. “Before I started my second year at Hogwarts, you gave me a book. What was it?”

Hermione laughed. “ _Double Occupancy: A Survey on Legilimency and Other Forms of Possession_. I thought it would help. I’m surprised you ever spoke to me again.”

Ginny smiled, a little wetly, and lowered her wand. “I wasn’t exactly popular enough to be choosy, back then. Kingsley, it’s her.”

“She’ll still need at least an hour of close observation for Polyjuice.” He was looking down at them with relief, though, and Hermione didn’t take offense. She knew the protocols as well as anyone. “Welcome back, Hermione. We didn’t think we’d be seeing you again. Are you injured?”

She pulled aside her torn robe, which was sodden with blood, and looked at the jagged mark on her leg. It was half closed over, like someone had cast a patchy healing spell. Her head spun when she sat up with Ginny’s support. “Not as badly as I thought I was.”

Shacklebolt nodded. “Poppy had just finished with the casualties when we left. We haven’t gotten ourselves into proper order yet, but I think she can sort this out.”

“What casualties?”

“Johnson took a glancing blow from Dolohov’s Curse, but she’s resting comfortably. The rest were minor injuries—you sounded the alert in time. Though Ron Weasley is probably going to do himself an injury trying to get back to Harrow House if we don’t get back to them quickly. We’ll have to bring you side-along. I’ll be needing your wand.”

Hermione winced. “I don’t have it. I lost it at some point during the attack.”

Ginny and Shacklebolt exchanged a glance. “Then how did you get here?” Ginny asked.

An excellent question. “Where are we?” Hermione finally bothered to look around. They were in a large, rolling field of unripe barley. It was dim and silvery under the light of the moon, which was still high in the predawn sky. That meant she hadn’t been out for more than a few hours.

“Just outside Cokeworth,” Shacklebolt said, slow and suddenly warier. “You didn’t send us that message? How did you escape?”

The overwhelming joy of being safe, and of knowing they hadn’t lost anyone this time, had turned quickly to dread. “I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “I don’t see how I could have.”

They all stared at one another in mutual apprehension. “We shouldn’t bring her back,” Shacklebolt said to Ginny. Hermione fought back irritation at being ignored—of course this wasn’t her decision. “Not until we know what’s going on. If nothing else, she needs to be thoroughly debriefed.”

“And we can do that more safely somewhere we have protections set up,” Ginny replied, “and more than just the two of us sitting in the open! Besides, if you think I’m going to keep my brother from his best friend a minute longer than I have to—“

Shacklebolt nodded, all decision now. “The others will be coming after us anyway if we take much longer.” He passed his wand from Hermione’s head to toe. “She told the truth; she’s unarmed. Ginny, you take her back, and I’ll cover you. Don’t let your guard down for a second.”

“Constant vigilance,” said Ginny, shooting Hermione a twisted smile. Then she took Hermione’s arm.

The new safehouse was a farmhouse in East Lothian. It looked large and comfortable and well-kept, and no doubt it was doomed to be as temporary as the last. Ginny gave the password, and the moment the door was open, the place exploded into activity.

“Where is Ron?” Hermione demanded, raising her voice over the confused babble.

“Upstairs,” someone said, so Hermione pulled away from Poppy Pomfrey’s gentle grip and made for the staircase, only to find Ron skidding to a halt at its foot. His face was blotchy and tear-reddened. His eyes fixed unhesitatingly on Hermione. Without a thought for her leg or for Shacklebolt’s raised wand, she threw herself at him and ignored everything else for the space of the fiercest, longest hug she’d ever received.

He didn’t let go of her hand while she choked down the blood-restoring potion and Madam Pomfrey dealt with her leg. He didn’t say a word while Shacklebolt and Hestia Jones interrogated her about everything she remembered between ordering the evacuation order and waking up in that field, but his grip tightened painfully when she told them about Snape’s appearance.

“I don’t understand how I could have gotten away,” she said at last, helpless and frustrated not to have a better answer. “I was disarmed and fainting. There’s simply no way I could have overcome him, much less Apparated afterward. And you said you had a message?”

Ginny reached into the neck of her robes and drew out the Galleon she wore on a thin chain. She drew it over her head and passed it to Hermione, who looked at once for the numerals around its edge. “I didn’t understand at first, but they were coordinates for the place where we found you. Kingsley and I went out for recon, and there you were.”

“I didn’t do this,” Hermione said, feeling about in her pocket. “I had my Galleon with me, but it’s gone now. So who did?”

“I would give a great deal more than a Galleon to know,” said Shacklebolt. Then he checked his pocketwatch. “That’s more than an hour. You’re clear of Polyjuice, at any rate.”

“I’ve been able to shake off Imperius for years. What else could it be?”

“Just good luck, for once?” said Ron, with an edge to his voice that didn’t speak much of optimism. “You’re back. You’re going to be fine. Can we just mark this one down as a win? It’s not like we get many of those.”

“Ron,” said Hermione repressively, and he sighed.

“I know. I just—what are we going to do, not trust you?”

“Right now,” said Madam Pomfrey briskly, coming back into the room, “we are going to give Miss Granger a second dose of that potion and a hot cup of tea, and then we are going to put her to bed to let the potion do its work. You can put as many guards on her as you think necessary, Kingsley, but if she can’t tell us anything more, keeping at her until she keels over again isn’t going to help any of us.”

This was dissatisfying, but it was good sense. Hermione’s whole body kept drooping against Ron’s shoulder as they walked upstairs to one of the bedrooms, which had already been set up with two bunkbeds for members of the resistance to come and go. Privacy was a forgone commodity these days.

“I know you’re fine,” Ron said, sitting awkwardly at the edge of the bed where she’d settled in. “That you’re you, I mean. Not—taken over. I can tell.”

Hermione felt perfectly herself, other than the blood-loss and potion-induced exhaustion, but they both knew better than to take these things on appearances. “We’ll work it out tomorrow.”

“Right.” His hand came to rest on her arm, its weight a comfort that pricked tears into her eyes. “Just—you’re not allowed to die. You know that, right?”

“The same goes for you, Ron Weasley.”

“As long as we’re both clear on that.” He bit his lip, clearly reluctant to cry again, and gave her arm one last pat. “Get some rest. We need that enormous brain of yours to sort all of this out in the morning. And sorry about your wand.”

She curled up on her side as he left, her right hand stretched across the mattress. Her palm felt achingly empty.

***

“Much as it pains me to say this, Ron was right,” Ginny said.

“Oi,” said Ron, but it was halfhearted. “Wait—right about what?”

“That we don’t really have any choice but to trust her, unless we want to lock her in the cellar under 24-hour observation. Which we could do, but we’re short on people as it is. And on potions stores. So unless you want to find someone else to plan that raid again from the ground up, Hermione’s back in.”

“I don’t like it,” Shacklebolt said. Ron glared at him, but Hermione was glad one of them was willing to be cautious.

“I don’t like it, either,” she said, “but I agree, if that’s worth anything. You haven’t found any evidence of Obliviate or other mind-altering charms. Veritaserum didn’t tell you anything new.” They’d been ill-able to afford using up one of their last doses, but if the raid Ginny referred to came off as she hoped, they’d be able to brew more.

“And she didn’t lose her mind and murder us all in our beds last night,” Ron put in, “so on balance I think we learn to live with her.”

“It’s one thing to expose ourselves and another to risk others,” Shacklebolt said. “Ollivander has already been captured once. This could easily be an attempt at securing him again.”

“He’s living on a small unmappable island off Aberystwyth,” said Hermione, “which I’ve told you all before, because I’m his secret keeper. If I’m under an enchantment, it could have sent me straight there before any of you knew I was alive. He and Luna are hardly at more risk if I go now. And I need a wand, Kingsley.”

“Right enough,” he said, after giving her another long, measured look. “Do try not to lose her, Weasley.”

“Fat chance of that,” Ron muttered.

***

She’d been to the island twice before. First to help settle Mr. Ollivander after his recovery—that had been the first real victory they had after the Battle of Hogwarts, rescuing him from a captivity that had stretched nearly three years, after they’d failed to escape with him from Malfoy Manor. There had been precious few such triumphs since then. And she’d gone twice since then to visit Luna, who rarely left the place, busy as she was managing a network of her father’s overseas correspondents. Luna really could do with more regular company, Hermione thought, as they landed on a rocky outcrop; the place was as cold, wind-swept, and starkly beautiful as she remembered, but the house on its highest point looked completely different. A gigantic half-finished mural stretched up two of its sides, showing bright blue skies above a dense green forest that teemed with unlikely painted creatures.

“Which one’s the Crumple-Horned Snorkack?” she asked Ron in an undertone as they walked across the lawn. “I can never remember what it’s meant to look like.”

“Beats me,” Ron replied, but he was grinning.

Luna was serenely happy to see them both, and they had a round of greetings and “How have you been?”s and several cups of tea in the cheerful, sunny front room—someone must have magicked those windows, because there certainly hadn’t been any sun when Hermione and Ron landed—before Hermione brought up the real purpose of their visit. “Is Mr. Ollivander in?”

“Oh, yes, both of us are always in,” said Luna. “But sometimes we don’t see one another for days. He’s upstairs in his workroom. He’ll be delighted to see you, but let me go tell him you’ve come. He doesn’t react well to surprises.”

“I hope they’re both sleeping and eating regularly,” Hermione said, mostly to herself, as she reconsidered the wisdom of leaving these two together. But they’d developed a rapport during their time of mutual captivity, and with Luna’s father trapped in Azkaban and Mr. Ollivander reluctant to put his own children and grandchildren at risk, they had seemed content with the solution.

Ron, who was busy looking under the lids of all the little crocks on the tea tray and finding more leaves and feathers than sugar or preserves, didn’t reply.

Properly warned, Mr. Ollivander received them in a large, open attic room with sloping walls. The floor was dusted in wood shavings, and it smelled beautifully of pine and cedar. Hermione looked with interest at the shelves of boxes labeled “Unicorn Hair” and “Troll Whiskers” and “Jackalope Antlers”. Mr. Ollivander himself rose slowly from a workbench, laying down his own wand as they approached. He was as shrunken as on the day they had rescued him, but he smiled on seeing them both, and the hands with which he enfolded Hermione’s were as strong and deft as ever.

“Dear girl,” he said, kissing her cheek. Ron looked apprehensive, as though he might not have appreciated the same greeting, but Ollivander only extended a hand to be shaken.

Hermione explained the situation as quickly, and with as little detail, as she could. “It’s rather urgent, but we were hoping you had something available. You do have a stock in place, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Ollivander, already moving to the cabinet that covered the entire back wall and pulling out one of the small, deep drawers. “Not as much as I could wish, though I admit demand has gone down—considerably. But I was accustomed to assistants and a constant supply of materials, and I confess even accounting for that, my work goes more slowly than it once did. Not,” he said, turning sharply to fix Hermione with his odd, silvery eyes, “that I have lost the knack. Never think that! I trust my quality is as it ever was. But I am slow and tired.

“You may still find it a reasonable selection,” he said, retrieving the wand from the open drawer, then frowning and putting it back. “I haven’t had to start fresh. I suppose you know your lot has been sending additional wands to me for safekeeping, as they become—available.”

Hermione nodded, though she didn’t like the idea, and said, “I’ve had to use someone else’s wand before. This should be easier than that.”

Ron snorted. “Because it won’t have belonged to Bellatrix bloody Lestrange?”

“Well, yes. Not to put too fine a point on it.” Much better to use a wand that had belonged to one of their fallen comrades. That way she could remember watching Lavender Brown fall from a balcony every time she needed to unlock a door. She quashed that image, still vivid five years on, and took the first wand Ollivander had deemed acceptable. It was long and rather knobby. She gave it a swish.

“Bamboo and dittany stalk,” Ollivander said. “Fifteen inches. A bit unusual, that one. No? No, I think not. Your first was vine and dragon heartstring, I believe. Let me see….”

The first that felt something close to right was also a core of dragon heartstring, in a lovely long willow wand stained quite dark. It worked perfectly well and fit to her palm, cool in her hand. Not unfriendly, just—still not hers.

“No?” Mr. Ollivander said, watching her face.

“Expecto patronum!” Hermione called, sighing as incorporeal pearlescent clouds burst from the wand. Not perfect, but she would practice until it was. This was certainly the best so far. “Whose was this, do you know?”

“Minerva McGonagall’s.” Hermione turned in surprise. Professor McGonagall was as alive and well as any of them, currently running a set of splinter operations from Shell Cottage. Ollivander smiled. “Her spare, which she replaced some decades ago with a more congenial fit. She donated this one to the cause when she heard of my work.”

“That’s perfect, then,” said Hermione, her heart lightening. “No, there’s no need to box it up, thank you. And, Mr. Ollivander, I wondered—might I ask you a question about what happened when we rescued you?”

Ollivander’s hands stilled on the wand, which he had been starting to wrap in a soft cloth. Ron looked up from the pile of violet tusks he’d been poking through.

“Of course, my dear,” he said, after a charged pause. “As you were the one who carried me on your broomstick, I believe you have that right.”

“Thank you. I know it’s difficult to talk about that time. The thing is, for the last several years I’ve been wondering how we did it in the first place.”

“You said you had a message,” he said. His eyes had gone strangely opaque. “That someone delivered a scroll to the Order’s headquarters with details of my removal from Malfoy Manor, which you used to launch the attack the moment they had cleared the wards.”

“Yes,” Hermione said. “We never learned where it came from, but it was good information. Has it occurred to you in the years since then where it might have come from?”

Ollivander sat heavily down at his workbench. Hermione heard Ron come up behind her to stand at her shoulder. “I’ve given it some thought, I can tell you,” Mr. Ollivander said, rubbing his hands together slowly. “Whoever sent that message did so at great risk of their life, and gave mine back to me. But I saw few people at Malfoy Manor, and none ever showed me any sign of sympathy. Of course, I have no way of knowing who came and went in the rest of the house. I never left that cellar.” His voice had gone distant, and the chafing of his hands grew more urgent. “I wish I could tell you.”

Keeping her tone as calm and gentle as she could, Hermione asked, “Did anyone happen to mention where they planned to take you, if we hadn’t stopped them?”

That jolted him out of his reverie. “Did the message not say?”

“No. It only gave the date and time of your departure and the way they intended to transport you.”

He nodded, then gave a little huff of a laugh. “I’ve always supposed He Who Must Not Be Named no longer thought I had new information for him—that much was true—but he was reluctant to kill me in case he thought of some new question, so he meant me to rot slowly in the safest place he knew of.”

“And where was that?”

“Why, Hogwarts, of course. In the care of Dolores Umbridge and Severus Snape.”

They left Ollivander to Luna’s surprisingly effective comfort and Apparated back within walking distance of the new safehouse. When Ron had finished declaring his disappointment Hermione hadn’t managed to splinch herself with the unfamiliar wand, and Hermione tartly asked him to remind her where he’d left his fingernails, he went oddly silent.

“What?” she asked.

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” he said. “You’re thinking something. I mean, it’s you, you’re always thinking something, but the Gobstones are rolling a bit faster than usual right now, aren’t they?”

“They might be.”

“So tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I don’t think you’ll like it if I do.”

“All right,” he said equably. “Then let me tell you. You think it’s Snape, don’t you.”

Ron Weasley, always surprising her. “What is?”

“The mole. The informer. Whoever told the Order how to rescue Ollivander, and probably whoever happened to leave the back door unlocked at Yaxley’s place during our strike last year, and almost definitely whoever hexed Amycus Carrow during the attack two safehouses ago. Or was it three? The point is, we all know someone’s feeding us information and making life just a little easier than it ought to be, which isn’t saying very much, but still. And you think it’s Snape.”

“I know I didn’t get to the safehouse under my own power last night,” Hermione said. “I know someone healed my leg enough that I didn’t bleed to death and used the Galleon to send that message. And the last person I saw before I lost consciousness was Severus Snape. Either he and the Death Eaters sent me back here as some kind of trap for the rest of you—which is not, you’ll note, their preferred way of handling captives—or someone else interrupted him, saved me, and left me to be found without a word of explanation. Or he did that himself.”

Without discussion, they had both turned away from the farmhouse by then, prolonging the walk and their opportunity for private conversation. They continued without speaking for a few moments, until Ron said, “For a while, I thought it was Malfoy.”

“Draco?” Hermione asked in surprise.

He nodded. “Always hated the ferrety git, but you know that better than anyone. And if you’d asked me while we were still at Hogwarts, I’d have told you in a heartbeat I thought he’d sink to anything. Still, I think deep down I never really wanted to believe anyone we went to school with could really have gone over to _him_ , not completely.”

“There was Cedric,” Hermione said quietly. “And dozens of others have proved it time and time again.”

Ron gave a violent shake of his head. “I know. I know, all right? It was daft. But I just kept thinking about when we were in the Manor, and he wouldn’t identify us. And about—about Dumbledore, and what Harry told us happened that night. How Draco couldn’t bring himself to do it.” He sighed. “But in the end, that was all just stalling. I reckon he never really had the courage you’d need to take a real stand.”

“Unlike Snape,” Hermione said flatly. “Who did actually kill Dumbledore.”

“I didn’t say it was a good theory. I just said it’s clearly our theory. And the thing is—I think it makes sense. Almost. Except that he killed Dumbledore, and I can’t see how that doesn’t make him the most loyal servant You Know Who ever had. So yeah, I think it’s daft. Except—I don’t know, all right? Are you going to tell the others?”

“I suspect Kingsley at least is already thinking it,” Hermione said. “Speaking of which, shall we go back before they decide I’ve tortured and murdered you horribly?”

They didn’t speak of it again. Hermione was busier than usual in the days that followed, refining the tactics for their raid and practicing endlessly with her new wand. She would need a working Patronus if the plan was going to succeed, because Ollivander had been right—Hogwarts, with its perimeter of Dementors, was the most secure stronghold the Death Eaters had. And Hogwarts was exactly where she intended to go.

It was a bold stroke, and she had spent months accounting for contingencies and convincing the rest of the Order it was a necessary and practicable one. They absolutely had to renew their store of potions ingredients, both those Hermione and her splinter group carried with them from safehouse to safehouse and the ones required by McGonagall and half a dozen other cells across the country. They had been making do with small, hopefully-unnoticed thefts from apothecaries and hospitals, as well as taking in what they could from sympathetic witches and wizards living more-or-less ordinary lives under Voldemort’s reign, but they were dangerously low not only on healing potions but on more esoteric ingredients needed for Veritaserum and other, rare potions vital to their cause. And there was one place Hermione knew she could find all of them. She knew the dungeons like the back of her hand, and she’d been into Snape’s office on more than one occasion. She had the Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder’s Map. What else had she, Harry, and Ron ever needed?

All of which, as she pointed out to the group assembled in the farmhouse dining room, made her proposal _possible_ to execute. It wouldn’t make it easy.

“We’ll move in pairs, as usual,” she said, gesturing at the map spread out on the table. “In the best case scenario, only two of us will need to go in at all. That relies on our entry through the Shrieking Shack, which was still unwarded in February. If we find that entrance blocked, we’ll need a diversion to draw off the Dementors, at which point we’ll proceed on foot—”

“We _know_ ,” said Ginny. “You made me recite the whole thing to you three times over breakfast. We’ve got this, Hermione.”

“Right,” said Hermione, her stomach giving an odd little heave. “Right, of course. We’ve planned all we can. Polyjuice for the rear guard? All four doses? Good. If the last dose begins to wear off and you still haven’t heard from us, you leave.”

“We _know_ —”

“Yes,” Hermione said, “but that’s the part I’m most worried about you ignoring.” She turned to Shacklebolt. “You’ll get everyone out, right? If we don’t come back?”

“I will,” he said, in that deep, eminently convincing voice.

He’d started to relax around her after the first day or two, when each subsequent round of anti-concealment charms failed to turn up any sign of foul play. Hermione smiled a slightly nauseous smile. “And you don’t think I’m leading all of you into a trap?”

“You know me,” he said. “Always willing to be taken in.”

That turned her smile genuine. “All right. It’s dark in Hogsmeade by now, and the Portkey is set. Gather ‘round, everyone. Ron, with me. And good luck.”

No-one spoke from then on. Hogsmeade was eerily similar to what she remembered, all the shops and houses still standing—students still drank Butterbeer and ate sweets. But the proprietors had changed, she knew, and many of the people once living in those cottages were long dead.

One thing that hadn’t changed was the discomfort of sharing the Invisibility Cloak with someone else. She would have loved to stride purposefully toward their goal, but instead she and Ron proceeded at an awkward shuffle until they reached the Shrieking Shack, which opened to them as easily as it ever had. With a last look back at Ginny’s borrowed face, Hermione shut the door and turned, wand at the ready, as they scanned the place for traps or guards.

Ron jabbed her twice in the shoulder, the signal for “All Clear,” and she gave him the same in agreement. They took off the cloak with relief. “I don’t think anyone’s been here in years,” Hermione whispered. “Not with all this dust.” The passageway to the Whomping Willow was also, thankfully, clear. Hermione made a quick scan of the Marauder’s Map and confirmed all was as it should be—a few students wandering about after hours in the upper levels, but no movement at all in the Potions’ Room. The little dot labeled _Severus Snape_ was motionless in his rooms. Ron caught Hermione’s eye and gave her a measuring look. Hermione shrugged, cleared the map, and beckoned him on. “Come on. We only have four hours.”

Four hours to exit by the Whomping Willow and send Ginny the Galleon message that told her they’d come that far. Four hours to shuffle slowly across the grounds, back under the cloak, and make their way in through one of the side entrances. Four hours to sneak down into the dungeons, stopping at the top of every staircase to check the map for surprises down below. Four hours to unlock the door to the Potions dungeon, which wouldn’t open to a simple _Alohomora_.

“Makes you feel like a kid again, doesn’t it?” Ron asked as she went through one charm after another. His nose was pressed into the back of her sweating neck under the cloak. “Fancy a snog?”

“ _Ronald_!” She bit back a laugh. It threw her off her rhythm, but it also stopped her hands from shaking quite so badly. The next charm did the trick.

Even harder were all the intricate hexes over the door to Snape’s office, which were very nearly enough to convince Hermione her suspicions were as daft as Ron had claimed, and Severus Snape was exactly as diabolical as he seemed. But they managed those between them, and then they were in. Hermione took out her little beaded bag, whose Untraceable Extension Charm was still working as well as it had done half a decade ago. “All right, hold this and watch the map. Let me know the _second_ anything changes. And check in with Ginny.”

“I _know_ ,” said Ron, in a passable imitation of his sister’s voice. Hermione rolled her eyes. Lighting her wand, she took the list of ingredients from her pocket and began to move about the room.

It was tricky work. The stores were labeled and organized meticulously, but she’d made dozens of tiny notes on which ingredients were potentially volatile and which were likely to cause problems ranging from immediate death to a degree of explosive noise that would be inconvenient for a stealth mission. She stabilized each of these, working as quickly and as rigorously as she could. McGonagall’s wand performed adequately, but she still found herself defaulting to the particular flick of the wrist or stroke of the handle that would have helped her most in the past.

“All right,” she said quietly to Ron, who had been eyeing his watch as well as the map and was getting decidedly jumpy. “Last one.” She slid open the drawer labeled ‘Zabericus Petals’, holding her breath against their putrid odor, and froze.

“What is it?” Ron demanded.

“Shh,” she hissed, her throat tight. “It’s—fine. Just a moment.” And she reached in to take her wand from the drawer.

It was hers, no question about it. Vine wood, ten and three-quarters inches, perfectly molded to her hand. Her heart leapt as she clutched it. Breathing hard, she made herself drop it in her pocket instead of wielding it like she desperately wanted to do. It would have to be examined thoroughly before she dared use it.

Beside the wand was a small scroll wrapped around a tiny stoppered bottle, the sort she’d seen on her desk in the Potions classroom hundreds of times. Her wand wasn’t bright enough for a good view of the odd substance inside, but it was bright enough to read the spiky, familiar handwriting on the parchment: “Destroy immediately at risk of death or capture.”

“Hermione!” Ron said, loudly enough that Hermione guessed he’d been saying it for a while. “Hermione, we have to go soon.”

“Right,” she said, “right,” and shoved the bottle deep in beside her wand, scooping out the petals into a waxed paper packet without much attention. “I’m coming.”

Ron seized her by the wrist, and she followed him without protest back under the cloak. They spent fifteen excruciating minutes replacing all the hexes on the office door. That had been part of the original plan, to delay any discovery of their theft. It had been a perfectly logical precaution, and it was now perfectly unnecessary, but Hermione didn’t take the time to explain and argue, just worked with Ron at furious speed. Unnecessary, because she’d been _right_.

Back across the grounds, under the Whomping Willow, and back to the Shack. Quick greetings to the others and assurances that all was well, and then Apparition back—it was far too dangerous to key a Portkey to their safehouse. All the while Hermione practically vibrated with excitement, with fear, with anger and a dozen other conflicting emotions. She still didn’t understand, not completely. But she had been right.

“Oh, Merlin, you have it all!” Poppy Pomfrey cried, the moment they were inside and unloading their prizes. “I’ll start on another batch of Reanimating Brew at once. I barely let myself hope you’d succeed.”

“We did,” said Hermione, fiercely. “Because Severus Snape allowed us to do so.”

Dead silence fell across the room. Most of them were gaping at her. Shacklebolt folded his hands and gave her a challenging look instead, and Ron threw up his hands. “All right,” he said. “Out with it. I don’t care how daft it sounds.”

So she came out with every one of the questions that had been plaguing her for the last five years, every odd piece of information or last-minute deliverance that had come to them. And, as she concluded with a large gulp of tea to wet her now-hoarse throat, she laid down her wand and the vial in the center of the table. “And I found this waiting for me tonight. Someone knew I was coming. Someone _let_ me come. It must have been Snape.”

“Let us accept your premise,” said Shacklebolt. “Only for a moment, understand. Let us say he’s been feeding us information, that he saved you several nights ago and left your wand for you tonight. Why leave you this?” And he lifted up the vial, holding it to the light.

Its contents were strange, silvery-white and smoky. They shifted slowly as Shacklebolt turned it between its fingers.

“Memories,” said Ginny. “Collected for a Pensieve. I saw it done, once.”

“There you are.” Hermione gestured to the vial. “That is Snape’s explanation. Memories can’t be falsified, can they?”

“Not in this form,” said Shacklebolt. “That much I know.” He looked almost ready to be convinced.

“Then we had better find a Pensieve,” said Hermione. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

***

“Miss Granger,” said Professor McGonagall, standing tall and forbidding in the doorway. “Mr. Weasley. The password, if you please.”

“You gave me ‘asphodel’,” said Ron cheerfully. “Yours, Professor?”

Professor McGonagall’s face set a little more sternly. “Nitwit,” she said. “Blubber. Oddment. And, I believe, tweak. Next time I’ll thank you to choose something that gives you less entertainment to hear me say.”

“We take our fun where we can,” he replied, holding his hand out.

McGonagall gave into a smile as she took it. “As much to my surprise as ever, Weasley, I am glad to see you. Hermione, come in. Do I recognize that wand?”

Hermione’s own was undergoing a battery of tests back at the safehouse. She itched to have it back, but it helped just knowing it was there. “Funny story, that,” Ron said as they were ushered inside.

McGonagall had set up shop in a spacious new wing transfigured neatly onto the back of Shell Cottage. Ron and Hermione walked past tables covered in parchment, being scribbled on furiously by remote agents with Encrypto-quills, a particularly handy Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes product George had been perfecting. McGonagall accepted their trunk full of potions ingredients gratefully as they settled into the room she’d made her study. “That will answer several of our most pressing needs,” she said. “You have my thanks, and I in turn have the Pensieve you asked about. Now, what was so important that it couldn’t be entrusted to one of those quills?”

By the time Hermione had finished her explanation, McGonagall had moved to the window, where she stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes turned out over the barren stretch of sea. “No,” she said, curtly. “I don’t believe it.”

“I understand.”

“You don’t, Miss Granger. I taught Severus Snape. I watched what he became, and when Dumbledore asked me to bring him into our fold after the War, I made a place for him again at Hogwarts. I worked with him, ate with him, fought with him—and fought alongside him, for that matter. I wanted to believe he had changed. If I hadn’t thought that possible—if the rest of your teachers hadn’t agreed—we would never have accepted him, whatever Dumbledore said.”

Privately, Hermione thought McGonagall was fooling herself if she really believed even a united faculty could have won this point against a determined Albus Dumbledore, but she kept that to herself.

“And whatever Dumbledore said didn’t prevent his murder at Snape’s own hand,” McGonagall went on, turning back to Ron and Hermione. She looked as though she’d aged a decade in the last several minutes. “Or do you intend to claim that never happened?”

Hermione shook her head.

“Then even if you are right, and Snape has pulled together some scraps of belated guilt for all the terrible decisions he’s made in his life, what could those memories possibly contain that would excuse him?” Her voice was shaking. Hermione hadn’t heard that since the Battle of Hogwarts.

“I’m not looking for an excuse,” Hermione said quietly. She was glad of Ron’s presence beside her, silent but supportive. “I’m looking for an advantage. I think you can agree we desperately need one.”

“Then leave excuses aside,” said McGonagall. “What could make us trust him? He’s spied for us before. You don’t need me to remind you how that ended.”

“I’m not asking you to trust anyone, Minerva,” Hermione replied. “I’m asking for the use of that Pensieve. We can discuss our next steps once we have more information.”

McGonagall’s mouth tightened, and then she sighed and held out her hand. “The vial, if you please.”

“He left it for me.” At what point had she become willing to defy Minerva McGonagall’s orders? Harry had always been better at that, Hermione thought, with a familiar pang.

“She’s right, you know,” Ron put in. “Hermione goes first.”

Watched by Ron and a reluctant McGonagall, Hermione settled herself at a table before a shallow stone basin. She knew Harry had used a Pensieve more than once, but she’d only ever seen them in illustrations. She would have liked to ask McGonagall for instructions, but she had only just won her point, and it seemed a bad idea to hesitate now. Doing her best with what she remembered from Harry, she unstoppered the vial and poured the memories out into the basin.

They expanded at once to fill it, floating silver-white and strangely beautiful. Hermione took a deep breath, braced her hands on either side of the basin, and bent her face until her forehead brushed the edge of the swirling mist.

And she fell, head over heels through nauseating blackness, until she was tipped out onto a sunlit Muggle playground beside a small black-haired boy in mismatched, shabby clothing, watching a pair of girls on a swing.

Snape and Lily Evans. Snape and James Potter. Snape and Dumbledore—over and over through the years, discussing Voldemort, discussing Harry, discussing Harry’s death—a grieved Dumbledore speaking of it as a foregone conclusion—planning Dumbledore’s own death—

And then the Shrieking Shack, dimly lit, at night, with Voldemort saying, “I have a problem, Severus.”

Hermione missed the next few beats of the conversation as she looked around wildly, finally spotting the crate in the corner where it hid the entrance to the tunnel. She knew that if she were to walk over there, crouch down, and peer in, she’d find herself and Ron, waiting there petrified—and Harry. Harry, alive, only hours before his death. Her throat seized, and it was all she could do to return her attention to where it belonged.

“My wand of yew did everything which I asked of it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another’s wand. I did so, but Lucius’s wand shattered upon meeting Potter’s.”

“I—I have no explanation, my Lord.”

Hermione listened for a second time as Voldemort explained his history with the Elder Wand, how he had taken it from Dumbledore’s grave and discovered he could work magic no more impressive than any he had achieved before. With years of hindsight, having worked everything through herself, she knew Voldemort was wrong, of course. It was never Snape he had needed to master. But she heard the words she still remembered, accompanied this time by the sight of Voldemort raising the Elder Wand: “I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last. Expelliarmus!”

Snape stared in utter confusion, not even approaching relief, as his own wand settled into Voldemort’s hand.

“A leaf out of Potter’s own book,” Voldemort said into the shocked silence. “You should be grateful, Severus. I thought for some time I would have to kill you. Fortunately for you, and only a few days ago, Ollivander told me otherwise—your death is unnecessary. I would have regretted it. That said,” he added, pocketing Snape’s wand, “I think I must relieve you of this until victory is assured. It means you will have little else to contribute tonight, but your faithful service until now will not go unrewarded. But follow me, and watch our triumph. Come, Nagini.”

She stood beside Snape in a forest clearing and watched Harry remove his cloak, revealing himself before all the assembled Death Eaters. She heard Hagrid’s anguished cry of warning, saw Voldemort’s wand rise again and Snape’s hand dart instinctively to his waist for the wand he no longer possessed. Saw Harry fall, and Voldemort too. As Voldemort recovered, shaking Bellatrix off, he said, “The boy. Is he dead?”

There was silence throughout the clearing. Voldemort had just begun to turn to Narcissa Malfoy when Snape, as though breaking from a trance, pushed himself forward and strode over to Harry’s limp body. Hermione watched Snape turn Harry over, swift but surprisingly gentle, and ghost one hand over Harry’s face before it came to rest on his heart. Snape’s breath hissed out from between his teeth as though he’d taken a punch to the gut. “Look at me,” he said, so quietly Hermione could barely hear, his shoulders hunched over Harry’s head to shield him from view. Harry’s green, green eyes slit open, fixing for one instant on Snape’s, before Snape exhaled again. “Do what you’ve come to do, Potter.” Then he straightened and called to all those gathered around, “He is dead!”

Hermione’s own eyes swam, because she knew what came next. She shut her ears against her own screams when Hagrid deposited Harry at the foot of the castle. She was dragged along with Snape into the castle in the chaos of the ensuing attack, saw him dodging curses, unarmed, in search of a hiding place. Saw the wild hope on his face when Harry shrugged off the cloak a second time, and the crushing despair she knew so well when Voldemort still would not die, because the snake Nagini still lived. Saw Snape watch Voldemort draw Snape’s own wand when the Elder Wand refused to turn on its master, cry, “Avada Kedavra!”, and bring a limping end to the battle and to all their hopes.

Then, before she had a chance to recover herself, she was standing beside Snape in his office. The drawer with the Zabericus petals stood open, but he was leaning over his desk, writing out a note. Her wand lay next to the parchment. He laid down his quill and took up an empty vial instead. “Now I hope we understand one another,” he murmured aloud, and, placing his own wand to his temple, he began to draw out memories in long, silken strands.

The scene dissolved. Hermione was turned over and over again, and was deposited back in her chair in McGonagall’s office.

She jerked herself upright with a ragged gasp, met Ron’s anxious blue eyes across the swirling surface of the Pensieve, and burst into tears.

It was quite some time before they were all capable of a rational conversation. McGonagall had insisted on her own turn in the Pensieve while Ron and Hermione retreated to the main part of Shell Cottage, where the signs of the Wizarding War were tempered by the bustle of cheerful family life and the cries of Bill and Fleur’s new baby. Ron and Hermione sat together drinking tea until Hermione’s weeping had subsided and McGonagall had emerged, face pale and eyes red-rimmed, for a conference.

“What are we going to do?” Ron asked, once Hermione had caught him up.

“We will have to make contact,” McGonagall said. “Whatever good he is doing, it can’t be as significant as if we were working in concert. But that’s not a decision we can make unilaterally. We’ll have to consult with Shacklebolt, at the very least—and with Andromeda Tonks—”

“Shacklebolt and Jones already know what I suspected,” said Hermione. “But I think we need to keep this as close as we can. Think of the risk if he’s discovered.”

“Yes,” said McGonagall heavily. Her eyes behind her square glasses had gone distant, as though she was turning the last several years over in her head. Then she shook herself. “Yes, the risk. We’ll have to consider very carefully how best to make that contact, when we do, so as not to expose him.”

Hermione nodded. “I have an idea about that.”

***

Hermione Apparated in at dusk, alone. She’d had to argue for that. Ron had wanted to come, of course, and Kingsley always preferred backup and redundancy, but this slim thread of possibility was so fragile and precious that she was reluctant to test it. Coming by herself was a show of good faith.

The playground had long since been modernized with brightly-painted equipment and ought to have looked cheerful, but instead it was deserted and grim, as were the streets about it, and the chill evening air of spring was not quite enough to explain this. Muggles might not know why their world had become more dangerous, but they could hardly have failed to notice. She wished she could think staying in after dark would keep anyone safer. Then, as she so often did, she tried not to think of her parents.

A faint pop made her spin about. She drew her wand—her _own_ wand, certified free of hexes—and it felt wonderfully good to be able to level it at the figure suddenly standing under the climbing frame. He was much as she remembered: tall and angular, the lank hair framing his sallow face now touched with grey, though it was difficult to be sure in the fading light. His eyes were impenetrably dark. He had his wand on Hermione, too, as though he’d arrived ready for a fight.

“Snape,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“Are you alone?” he demanded.

“Yes,” said Hermione. “My fourth year at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy hit me with an engorgement curse. When Ron showed you what he’d done, you said you couldn’t see any difference. What had he cursed?”

An odd flicker of reaction ran over Snape’s features. “Your teeth.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d remember,” said Hermione, lowering her wand.

His lip curled. “Looking for an excuse to attack me?”

“I wouldn’t need excuses. I have reasons, if I want them. But I’m alone, I don’t want to attack you, and I know who you’ve been working for. Who you’ve always been working for. Now, will you stop pointing that at me so we can talk properly?” He did, but only after casting a concealment charm over them both. He tensed as Hermione approached him, and his grip on his wand barely relaxed when she only sat down on the swing beside him. “I’m glad you came,” she said.

Snape snorted. “It’s just as well I kept that coin. If we are to do this again, we’ll need a better way of communicating than on old Galleon. Their use isn’t a closely-guarded secret.”

“We have methods,” Hermione said. “Or you can suggest others. In the meantime, may I have the Galleon back?”

“Is the Resistance as hard up as that?”

“It’s a memento,” Hermione said softly. “I think you know that.” Snape dug it out of one pocket and gave it back. When their fingers touched, he snatched his hand back as if burned. She turned it over, rubbing the surface with her thumb. “I keep wondering if I should apologize, you know. For everything I’ve thought—”

“Unnecessary, Miss Granger.” They might have been back in the dungeons, and Snape sneering at her for being a know-it-all. “You said yourself, you have reasons. Whatever I didn’t do, or did for reasons you never imagined—“

“You were still absolutely horrible.” She hesitated. “And horribly brave. I know you may not want to hear that from me.”

“What I want to hear from you is that there’s a plan beyond hapless flailing about in the dark, and that your organization has more hope of success than I’ve been able to make out from your activities. Otherwise, this association is not only doomed to failure, but likely to get me killed in short order.”

“It is an association you want, then?” Hermione asked, watching him closely. “You’re willing to work together again, and pass us information directly rather than cleaning up around the edges of each disaster?”

“I fail to see any other way you’ll achieve anything worthwhile.”

“All right,” Hermione said, trying not to smile. “Then I’ll be your primary point of contact. We may be willing to expand the circle in time.”

“When you say ‘we’—” He hesitated. “Is Minerva McGonagall still alive?”

So the Death Eaters didn’t know. That was good. “I’m not authorized to tell you the status of any of our members.”

His eyes flashed. “I could have the answer out of you, you know.”

“Not if you intend to work with us, you won’t!” Hermione said. “I suppose that’s how you found out about the raid on the potions stores? You _do not_ have permission to go rummaging through my mind, Snape. Especially not for anything to do with the Order.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “I needed to find a way to contact your associates. Unless you’d have preferred me to leave you bleeding on that kitchen floor? I did not go ‘rummaging’ for anything else. That list of ingredients, not to mention the rest of your plans, sat at the very top of your mind. I suppose you’d been reviewing it with your usual compulsiveness. I could hardly avoid seeing it. If you want to guard against such intrusions in future, I suggest you develop even the most rudimentary skill at Occlumency rather than scold me for saving your life.”

“I’d like nothing better,” said Hermione at once. “Will you teach me?”

His eyes narrowed. “If you think I’ve nothing better to do with my time—”

“I’m sure you do,” she said, “but it would be a valuable skill. We have no-one with anywhere near your experience, and no-one accomplished in Legilimency to test us. If we could schedule in some lessons in addition to our other work—”

He laughed. It was as harsh and unpleasant a sound as she remembered. “Overeager as ever, I see. I suppose you would be a better student than Potter, at least, though that’s a very low bar to crawl over.”

“Don’t talk about him!” The words were out of her mouth before she knew she meant to say them. Snape’s face went oddly still, and then he looked away. Hermione collected herself. “That’s not—I’m not ready to discuss Harry with you. Except to say, I wish he’d known about you. He would have wanted to know.” She thought of Snape bending over Harry, Harry staring up at him, and Snape swearing to all the Death Eaters that he was dead. “Maybe he did, in the end.”

Snape said nothing for a long while. Hermione sat there quietly, unwilling to press him. Finally he said, “If we are to continue meeting, we’ll have to find another place. As nostalgic as this is, it’s hardly convenient, and I can’t be seen leaving Hogwarts without reason.”

“I’ve thought about that. The Shrieking Shack is close enough, and I can get in without being spotted.” She held out an Encrypto-quill. “You can key this to yourself, so whatever it writes can only be read when you, personally, touch your wand to the parchment. I have its double. We can use them to arrange meetings or communicate urgent business.”

He frowned at the quill, tapping it with his wand and running a finger along the vane. “That’s rather impressive.”

“I’ll tell George Weasley you said so.” This time she let herself smile at his disconcerted look. “And then that’s all, I think. Unless you have urgent information to pass along right now.”

“When you receive information, Miss Granger,” he said sourly, “it will come after I’ve considered it thoroughly beforehand. This is a business of finesse, not of impulse. Though, if you do see Minerva—you might tell her—”

Whatever he’d been meaning to say, words failed him. Hermione took pity. “Everyone who needs to know about you has already been told, Snape,” she said, measuring her own words carefully. Snape did seem to take her meaning, though. He nodded. “Until next time.” She extended her hand.

He regarded her a long moment before taking it. There was nothing like warmth in his expression, only a resolve that might have had nothing to do with her, but it lifted her heart all the same. And as she Apparated away, for the first time in years, she felt the stirrings of real, substantial hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Orockthro for the beta!


End file.
